Is John Boehner Dumb Enough to Take $400 Billion in Cuts a Decade From Now in Exchange for $1.2 Trillion in Tax Hikes That Start ASAP?

Is Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) really so dumb—or unprincipled—that he will buy into a plan that raises $1.2 trillion in tax revenue starting next year in exchange for $400 billion in entitlement cuts between 2023 and 2033?

Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion — the middle ground of what President Barack Obama wants and what Republicans say they could stomach. Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion — and perhaps a lot more, to get Republicans to swallow those tax hikes. There will be at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and "war savings." And any final deal will come not by a group effort but in a private deal between two men: Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The two men had a 30-minute phone conversation Wednesday night — but the private lines of communications remain very much open.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write that Obama will show "zero flexibility on his insistence on a higher tax rate for top earners" and that Boehner and Republicans, worried that the GOP will shoulder blame for any economic slowdown associated with going over the fiscal cliff, will acquiesce if they can pretend they fought to keep taxes low and succeeded in getting "specific cuts to entitlement spending." Because Paul Ryan's Medicare reforms didn't start (barely) reducing outlays for a decade, VandeHei and Allen say that both Democratic and Republicans will ultimately push off spending cuts until sometime "between 10 and 20 years from now."

This sort of negotiation is appalling but has the ring of truth to it. Recall that Boehner is in no way a small-government enthusiast—indeed, he's voted for just about every big-ticket item you can name in the past dozen years, from No Child Left Behind to invading Iraq to Medicare Part D to Bush's 2008 stimulus to TARP. And recall, too, that mere weeks before the 2010 elections, when the Tea Party was at its height, he released a "Pledge to America" that promised to cut a measly $100 billion in spending (which, as Peter Suderman noted at the time, was actually more like $50 billion) out of a budget north of $3.5 trillion. On top of that, when asked by NBC News in January 2011 to name a single program "we could do without," Boehner replied, "I don't think I have one off the top of my head."

Whether Boehner can sell such a deal to House Republicans is another matter (the Washington Examiner's Conn Carroll flatly says there is "no way" the GOP members will sign on to such a deal).

This is as good a time as any to remind people that we have such high and growing levels of debt is because Republicans and Democrats alike have jacked up spending like nobody's business. Look upon the chart of federal outlays per capita and despair. Going back to Jimmy Carter, there's a clear pattern: Republican presidents ratchet up spending and Democratic presidents consolidate the increases. This reality is at almost complete odds with political rhetoric, in which Republicans masquerade as spending hawks and Democrats talk about increasing outlays for the wretched of the nation. Perhaps the near-total disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the reason why we can't get anywhere—taxpayers are constantly being misdirected by the powers that be.

Here's another point worth underscoring: High levels of public spending and debt retard the economic growth that increases living standards. The case against endless public spending and the debt it inevitably creates isn't an abstract argument about paying your way or being moral or anything like that. There's a crushingly strong empirical case that public spending crowds out private investment and that "debt overhang" reduces growth.

As I noted earlier today, Barack Obama never misses an opportunity to say that he favors a "balanced approach" to getting the government's finances in order. He's on the record saying that he's willing to cut $2.50 in government spending for every $1 increase in tax revenue. And now John Boehner—the head of the opposition party, fer chrissakes!—is ready to jump on a deal that nets $1 dollar of spending cuts for $3 in revenue (never mind that the tax hikes start now and the spending cuts 10 years down the road).

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215 responses to “Is John Boehner Dumb Enough to Take $400 Billion in Cuts a Decade From Now in Exchange for $1.2 Trillion in Tax Hikes That Start ASAP?”

Is Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) really so dumb – or unprincipled

Yes.

The GOP has no interest in fixing anything. I cannot stress this enough. At this point, rocking the boat in the slightest is what a politician is the most averse to. Everything must continue on as it has. Their margins of victory are so slim (because they are essentially indistinguishable from one another), it makes them terrified to even contemplate doing something that causes any demographic of voters the slightest pain. This is the new normal: endless pushing off of “doing” anything. Get used to it.

Sir Humphrey: If you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn’t accept it, you must say the decision is “courageous”. Bernard: And that’s worse than “controversial”? Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! “Controversial” only means “this will lose you votes”. “Courageous” means “this will lose you the election”!

The USSR lasted approx 70 years, NHS in England is coming apart at the seams (again close to 70 years), so I imagine we can go on about that long as well before things really get interesting. The question is, where to mark the start of the 70 years?

I’d like to say 1928 when that big government asshole Herbert Hoover finally got his grubby hands on the Presidency, but the system survived him and his disciple FDR and was recovering for a time.

one could argue that it was Nixon’s abandonment of the ersatz gold standard that kicked things off, but I figure that the sea change happened immediately after JFK’s 99 Billion USD budget (“I won’t be the first president to go above 100 billion”, he famously opined.) which is the last time I’ve ever heard a politician try to rein in spending.

I guess it depends on what debt-GDP looked like. Our is already bad and getting worse, but how does it compare with other economices that have begun to or already imploded?

So we have soemthing like $16T of national debt. Layer in the state debt, personal debt, mortgage debt, student loan debt, and that puts us at what, soemthing like $40-$50T? On an economy that’s about $15T?

I’m not sure how much longer it can go on but I suppose it can go on for as long as the US can borrow money. That won’t be forever, and it could be for a long time. Or not.

I’m going with 1980. The Federal debt to GDP percentage was dropping until then and has risen more or less dramatically since. That puts it at around 2050…just enough time for us to pull out all the stops following the crash and burn of SS and Medicare and truly transformed ourselves into Greece.

What is truly delusional is the apparent belief that no bill will ever be presented.

Take a look at the tools for pushing it off: deficit spending and quantitative easing. Each is showing lower marginal returns each time it is used. When they stop producing even a transitory bounce, that’s when its game over.

Nothing I have seen since the election makes me regret ordering those British Sovereigns (quarter-ounce gold coins, for you fiatards) earlier this month.

There will be no cuts, because that’s precisely what the voters in America want. No cuts, additional spending on safety nets and “infrastructure”.

We can scream “the GOP and DEMs are exactly the same” until our faces turn blue, but for all intents and purposes, the GOP was the libertarian party in the last election. They got trounced because people actually thought they were going to cut medicare and such.

The GOP “evolved” on the immigration issue in a hurry after the election. Politicians chase votes, and the voters don’t like cuts. Without demand, there is no supply.

AAAHH! Stop using their bullshit 10 year projection math! Or else talk about the $10T in additional debt over the same period. Jesus, this makes me watching-Eli-Manning-fuck-my-winning-weekend mad. The important point is that no matter what scenario they agree on, we’re still borrowing approximately 1/3rd of our spending and will continue to do so.

(Sorry guys, I’m not blaming reason in particular, but I’m losing it over this one across the board. Don’t speak their obfuscating language.)

Yes, yes, yes. That shit is stupid. Especially when the people saying it almost never point out that this is a 10 year projection (which means that it may well never happen at all). Is this a new thing, or am I just noticing it now?

It started during the last debt ceiling fight. Some evil genius staffer figured out that the Press is innumerate, and came up with this idea that they could talk in trillions in “deficit reduction” on a 10 year scale so it would be on the same scale as the annual deficit.

Honestly, I want to find the dude, buy him a drink, then stomp his guts out his asshole.

Its probably some deal like Milton Friedman’s coming up with income tax withholding. You’re doing your job and don’t really consider the moral implications and realistic consequences until after the plague is out of Pandora’s Box.

Steroid User #1: My girl thinks he’s really cute. And she says he was really good in “Thelma and Louise.” So to be quite honest, I’d like to give him a savage beating. The kind of beating where the cops would say, “What kind of animal would do this to another human being?”

It’s news like this that makes the Doomsday preppers look like geniuses. We amass more debt with no hope of real spending cuts while our citizens fight over phones on Black Friday. I’m going to start digging my bunker tomorrow.

Boehner remains desperate to lift his skirt for any deal the president offers. He rightly knows House Republicans will definitely take all of the blame from the media when things go south, but he’s also the type of big government asshole who would rather be conciliatory doing any dumb thing than be seen being obstructing government in action. Hopefully there’s enough less-established GOP representatives to queer any deal he tries to make.

$1,200,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 Americans is $4000 each. Subtract out all people who don’t pay into the system at all and I expect my tax bill for next year to go up about $8000. What. The Fuck.

If this is the best we can get, we’d be better off with full TEAM BLUE control. Let them jack up taxes to their 100% top bracket wet dream, let them have their infinite deficits. If we’re destined to become Argentina, all I ask is that we have TV as good as Argentina.

If this is the best we can get, we’d be better off with full TEAM BLUE control.

I’m at the point where I don’t care about tax policy or regulations. Just stop borrowing money and pay down the debt! I don’t care how it’s done. If we are going to get screwed anyway, it may as well be by the Dems.

As I’ve posted earlier the GOP could follow my plan to fuck the Democrats in the ass:

Pass ONLY the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the middle class. Give the D’s exactly what they have asked for, and NOTHING ELSE. Then walk away, and swallow the defense cuts along with the domestic spending cuts, and the rest of the “fiscal cliff”. Come back and fight another day.

They can claim that we didn’t really go over the “fiscal cliff”, since only the spending cuts happened. Voters won’t be pissed off becuase they won’t be hit directly in the pocket book, and any harm to the economy will be minimized, and can then be blamed on Obama.

Nope. Such a plan would only work if they said, right up front, we’re voting for this because the people want it, but it won’t work.

And they can’t say that.

What they should do is split the vote. Have all their Top Men say no. And then get just enough low level turds to vote yes. Even though this will present itself as disunion in the GOP, it will still allow them to put forth a See, I Told You! moment.

Why do you persist in the delusion that the GOP wants to do anything; that they even want to fuck the Democrats in the ass? THEY DON’T. There is one party in this country now, it is TEAM BE RULED, it is the Statist party. They have zero interest in actually pursuing any kind of strategy against the other TEAM; all the TEAM bullshit is to keep the sheep bleating against one another and not noticing they’re being fucked. That’s it, nothing more.

Kicking a few pebbles off the top doesn’t really count as a size reduction.

Or maybe a better analogy is “shrinkage”.

Anyhow, back to Hazel, you said in your first post that there was no exchange, and to let TEAM BLUETARD win outright…for now. That’s a political non starter. You can’t concede and then say later “well, we really didn’t mean to concede…we just needed to show all the little people how fucked they’d be under TEAM BLUETARD”, because that shows intentional fucking without consent.

Hazel is right, though…some higher level of gamesmanship is needed here. Also, the GOP needs some better media. I mean, damn, they offered to cap deductions, which is pretty revolutionary if you ask me, and brought more revenue to the table than the Ds, and yet they get all the blame while the Pres. plays golf and starts some asinine Twitter hashtag.

In Aikido, there’s the concept of using the enemy’s energy against him. The D’s are in the position of falling over themselves to demand tax cuts, with nary a word about the spending cuts. This is Ju-jitsu. Give the Democrats what they are literally asking for: tax cuts.

Fact is the Democrats actually would PREFER to end ALL of the tax cuts, but they’re boxed themselves in to advocated extending them for most people, because they think that the R’s will never agree to any tax hikes and they can use that as a talking point.

They think they are leaning against an immovable object and they’ll never get what they rae asking for but don’t actually want. So move the immovable object and give them what they are asking for but don’t want. And then walk away while they fall flat on their faces.

Concede on what? Concede that we should cut taxes for everyone except the top two brackets?

How is that bad?

We have th D’s in the position of champtioning the lions share of the Bush tax cats. And yet we’re living in a bizarro land where a miniscule tax increase on the top two brackets in exchange for ALL of the “fiscal cliff” spending cuts is a “concession”? What?

I’m saying that the House should pass a bill that extends the Bush tax cuts for everyone but the top two brackets. Exactly what Obama has been asking for and insisting he’ll sign the minute it hits his desk. And nothing else. No deal. Just the tax cut extension.

Please. Look if you’re too afriad to do a 5% spending cut to defense AND discretionary spending NOW, will you EVER be ready to seriously reduce the size of government Tulpa? When will be the precisely right moment to actually cut government spending?

If you think it’s too scary because the big bad liberal media will say that you caused a recession why don’t you just throw in the towel right now, and admit that you’re more interested in whther Team Red controlls the government than the actual policy outcomes that a Team Red victory is supposed to produce.

Spending cuts now is far more important than any set of idiotic talking points for an election two years away.

I’m pretty sure Boehner did win re-election. And this is why the Rs re-won the House, so they could pretend to give a rats ass about fiscal responsibility? I don’t get why some people care whether or not the GOP gets blamed for the shitstorm that’s coming. Suppose the Ds get all the blame and the GOP wins it all in 2016, do you seriously think we will see smaller government then? When has the GOP ever given us smaller government?

Because face it; with the Dems controlling the Presidency, the Senate, and with the Dem Op media, there is no chance at all that real spending cuts, real entitlement reform, and real tax reform will happen on anything like Republican terms.

This, of course, is a Tulpa loophole so that if I did put forward a plan, he would simply dismiss it as ‘fantasy’, no matter how good it is

That brings back fond memories of one of my earliest debates with the man. It was on the subject of immigration, and he thought he would use Socratic questioning to catch me in a contradiction.

So we go round and round, I’m answering his questions in good faith, and he’s getting weirder and weirder, and finally I tell him that I want the same rules for people crossing into VT from NH as they have crossing into VT from Quebec.

Having utterly failed at his goal, what does he do? “oh well that’s non serious, some of us want to have a grown-up conversation”.

It was at that moment I started to realize that I was communicating with an utter prat, a glib pseudo-intellectual of the Tom Friedman variety.

He probably thinks he’s a great thinker because so many people are irritated by him. In reality people are irritated by him because he is a total prat, a an irritating fool that is smugly confident of his wittiness and charm.

I vaguely recall the conversation tarran is talking about. IIRC the open borders people were making the argument that tarran mentions, and I asked them whether they favored background checks at state line crossings or opposed background checks at international borders, since the position tarran mentions requires one or the other.

It was only when some people jumped in and said they opposed background checks at international borders that I said they were outside the mainstream. Not sure if I said “unserious”, maybe I did.

If only we were all warriors like Tulpa, out there fighting the good fight with the GOP. Then we’d be up to his moral standards. WTF did you do again Tulpa? Aside from support Mitt Unelectable Romney for GOP nom, ensuring defeat?

I meant we’re going into rerecession either way. The way for the GOP to evade blame is to sign on for leftist welfare statism.

This is as good a time as any to remind people that we have such high and growing levels of debt is because Republicans and Democrats alike have jacked up spending like nobody’s business.

And it is an even better time to remind people that, when you use debt as money, debt has to expand forever, or the monetary system blows up. Hence, someone must always be borrowing more, either private or public.

Based on a sample size of 3 of each. Which GHWB and BO don’t fit. Well, as that famous Romney supporter says, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, Gillespie. Victoria Postrel wouldn’t misread a chart that badly, btw.

When asked what areas the Dems were willing to discuss cuts on = “Look – there’s no reason to start discussing “cuts” before we even know how much we can get! I mean, if we don’t know how much money we can raise, then why should we start the discussion talking about what we need to get rid of? It doesnt make any sense. Maybe we can pay for everything, we just don’t know yet because no one can figure out how much revenue we’re going to bring in

I am not fucking kidding = “How much we can *get*”

Even the CNBC anchors, which typically ride easy on guests, went, “What??”

The woman (who to be fair is a pretty consistent budget hawk, and mentions silly govt spending examples daily) was like, “…have you even *heard* of the Deficit??”

Charlie being Charlie, he smiles his gold-toothed smile and is like, “I’ve been in Washington a long time little lady and a deficit never killed anyone…”

He then went on about the children and police and teachers and roads and bridges and why do people who invest money hate poor people all they care about is getting rich and that’s not what America’s about and we need to share the wealth and make sure granny gets free drugs so they need to control prices and tax financial transactions because money making money isn’t like real economic activity like digging holes and filling them in…

Except we already do know that the potential revenue increases from hiking tax rates on high earned incomes is miniscule compared to the existing deficit. The only point to the Dems obsession with raising taxes is to provide cover for them avoiding the topic of spending cuts altogether.

Is Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) really so dumb – or unprincipled – that he will buy into a plan that raises $1.2 trillion in tax revenue starting next year in exchange for $400 billion in entitlement cuts between 2023 and 2033?

The answer of course is “both”. He is a moron. And he is unprincipled. This is not a big secret.

No, he’s not dumb enough to do it. He’s enough of a profligate statist prick to do it. The election’s over and he thinks he can win the bullshit the electorate with shiny objects like gays or Mexicans to keep the DC power crack flowing his way.